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August 23, 2011

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Food & Drink

Making some random foodstuffs…

This week I tried making some strange food.  Last week I encountered a recipe for Caramelized Peanut Butter Banana Quesadillas posted to the Craftzine blog. Bananas, marshmallows, and Peanut Butter – some of my favorite foods from when I was 12.

We just happened to have some left over tortillas and a looming bike ride so I decided to try this for breakfast.  However, my adult self decided the marshmallows and butter would be too much. I took a single tortilla, covered it in a thin layer of peanut butter, sprinkled on some brown sugar and added a layer of banana slices on half of the tortilla.  I folded it in half and toasted in in a frying pan. It came out quite tasty this way. Next time I won’t bother with the brown sugar, it just made a mess and didn’t add anything.

The second random food I made this week was a blueberry dessert.  We had some blueberries that weren’t all that exciting to eat so I decided to try to make them into a blueberry crumble dessert. I made the mistake of just winging the topping. I used oats, flour, yogurt, and honey. I accidentally poured too much flour in and the mixture got too doughy and didn’t turn out so great. Next time I’ll make more of a dry topping because the blueberries were tasty underneath.

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August 14, 2011

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Crafts, crocheting, knitting, Pets

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Dear cats, stop stealing my coasters!

I have a set of coasters that are made of felted wool (knitted by me of course). They are very absorbent and make great coasters. They also attract cats like crazy. In the middle of the night, one of our cats steals the felted wool coasters and leaves them on the floor in the hallway.

Using a multi-colored wool yarn that had been given to me as a gift, I recently knitted up a rectangle and felted it.  Felting rarely turns out a perfect square, so I had to trim the edges to make a coaster.

I rolled up the extra felted material, added a bow and call my creation a cat toy. So, dear cats, stop stealing my coasters!

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August 12, 2011

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desserts, Food & Drink

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Making stuffed berries

I came across a post on Craftster via the Craftzine blog about a super easy no bake summer dessert that I decided to try.  The chocolate chips I got for the raspberries were a tad bigger than normal and sometimes were difficult to get in the berries without splitting them.  With the help of a strawberry huller, the no bake cheesecake filled strawberries turned out great! I plan to take them to a party for others to enjoy 🙂

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August 9, 2011

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cooking, Food & Drink

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Cooking with Quinoa… a fun grain!

Ever since I came across quinoa, I’ve been interested in recipes that I come across that use it. It’s a very small seed and when you cook it up, it opens up and looks like a little spiral.

Tonight I used this recipe but modified it to my taste of course. I added zucchini, garlic, some left over vegetable broth, more thyme, oregano from the garden, and a special spice mix that I got at the Savory Spice Shop on 6th Street.

The ingredients ready to go – carrots, zucchini, onion, tomato, and garlic:

First, the onions were sauteed in a bit of olive oil and some crushed garlic:

After appropriately cooked, but not overcooked so they would stay crunchy, I added the quinoa and toasted it for a few minutes:

Next, the vegetable broth and water along with herbs (thyme, oregano, pepper, spice mix) were added to the pot. That simmered for a few minutes and then the carrots and zucchini was added:

After the liquid was absorbed, the tomatoes and spinach were mixed in. I had a bit too much spinach and had to take some out. Whoa, so much spinach!

Once the spinach was fully cooked down, I served it with some shredded Parmesan on top.  Not bad for a light summer time meal, but I’m still trying to figure out how to get more flavor in quinoa dishes.

Look at all of those colors – such a healthy dish!

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August 2, 2011

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Crafts, sewing, upcycle

Recycling bike inner tubes into a phone case

Okay, so I only used a small part of a bicycle inner tube to make a phone case.

Next week I start training for a half marathon that takes place in November. I also decided to start using a fitness tracking application called Endomondo. To use Endomondo, I need to carry my phone with me on my runs which I’ve never done before because it’s big and I’ve not a found a good case for carrying it. At the Urban Assault Ride put on by New Belgium brewery, one of the schwag items we came home with was a little pouch made out of a bike inner tube which gave me this idea. The inner tube will help the phone stay dry while I sweat like crazy in the Texas heat.

This weekend I decided it was time to make the phone case with the start of training on the horizon.  I grabbed an old mountain bike inner tube and cut off a piece of it. After my first attempt at making the case ended up just a tad too small, I succeeded on the second try.

One of the trickiest parts of this case was the zipper. I had to deconstruct a zipper so that it would be on continuous piece by folding it in half and putting each end into the zipper pull. You’ll see what I mean in the pictures at the end.

First I cut the tube down the middle and washed it. Next, I sewed on the zipper to one side:

Next, I folded the zipper over and top-stitched it:

Then, I added the piece needed to put a strap through (normally I wear a dog leash around my waist, which is the best place to attach a phone).  Then, I folded it in half and sewed the bottom together.  I then had to turn it to the right side and try to attach the zipper pull, which turned out to be quite tricky the second time. After enlisting the help of pliers and my husband, I got the zipper pull attached and turned the case back inside out and sewed the smaller end together.

After that, I trimmed the edges near the seam and turned it right side out. Complete!

Some useful tips: rubber isn’t that hard to sew, but it’s tricky to get it to feed correctly through the sewing machine. I had to play with both thread tension and the foot tension to get it to work correctly.  Sewing through more than two layers  gets more difficult.

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August 1, 2011

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Pets

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How to heal dog paws / make your dog sad

How to heal dog paws / make your dog sad: Apply bag balm to affected areas of pads. Cover with a sock. Wrap tape around top of sock to hold it on. Watch as your dog gives you sad eyes.

Our 50 pound dog has little tiny paws. They are also very sensitive. When we go for long walks or runs on rough ground, she often ends up peeling parts of her pads off and then limps around for a week while they heal. I think it also happens when she runs for too long on hot concrete. In order to help them heal and to keep her from continuing to chew on them, I use the above method to protect her paws for a few days. It happens so often that I purchased little kids socks to use. I also use paw wax to help protect them so that this doesn’t happen, but often I can’t predict when they will become sore.

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July 31, 2011

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baking, bread, Food & Drink

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Making the most delicious banana bread

Have I ever mentioned that I love to eat bananas? To fuel my habit of eating them, I almost always buy more than I can eat before they go bad. Rather than putting them out into the compost where the rats will eat them, I throw them in the freezer once they are over-ripe.

Then every so often, I make them into some of the best banana bread I’ve ever tasted.  I always make two loaves at a time. The best part of that banana bread is the fact that it’s semi-healthy because you use yogurt instead of butter.  To make this delicious bread, I follow a recipe from Craftzine but I go heavy on the bananas, lighter on the nutmeg, and heavy on the cinnamon and ginger. The ginger gives the bread a nice bite.

First, I defrost 8 or more bananas (in case some aren’t good enough to use). I used to peel them while frozen but after a while my fingers were way too cold.

Eww… frozen and now defrosted bananas

All the ingredients ready for mixing:

The finished batter:

And after baking for an hour, the delicious product, so good that we eat some right away:

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July 25, 2011

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Crafts, sewing

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Making buttons (out of shrinky dink)

So it turns out that you can make buttons out of shrinky-dink plastic! You know, that plastic from your childhood that you could draw on and then put into the oven to make useless shapes out of?

This tutorial from Scissors.Paper.Wok inspired me to give this a shot because I  need buttons for two knitted baby bibs currently in the works. One is for a boy and the other a girl and from previous button shopping I remember not being terribly excited about options to match my knitted bibs.

Because I didn’t have a large round paper punch as used in the tutorial, I started with 2 inch squares and then used a corner round punch to remove the sharp edges.  I used a paper pattern to get the holes in the right spots and punched them with a normal paper punch.

I drew designs on the four buttons, some inspired from the button tutorial and other from icons I pulled up on Google.

Before shrinking:

After baking between parchment paper on 300 degrees for a few minutes:

I must say that they turned out better than I could have hoped. Now the hard part is choosing which button goes one which bib! I think the girl should get the rocket ship of course.

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July 11, 2011

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baking, bread, Food & Drink

Making beer bread… again

After my last attempt at beer bread I decided to try again, this time with fresh baking powder. This time I made the plain variety from Bake at 350 using Anchor Christmas Ale:

I only baked the bread for 50 minutes at this time, in the hope that would make the bread fluffier with a softer crust.  The bread was somewhat less dense this time but still had a rather hard crust. I’m not certain why the crust is so hard but the bread is pretty tasty warm out of the oven:

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June 26, 2011

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baking, desserts, Food & Drink, side dishes

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Baking plantains & peaches

I purchased a plantain because I know that I like them but have never made them at home. I prefer the non-sweet version so I decided to try out baked tostones.  While I had the oven on I decided to whip up some baked peaches since we had some very ripe peaches.

The recipe for tostones all called for green plantains. My plantain wasn’t green but I think it turned out fine anyhow.

I sliced up the plantain into thick slices and tossed with salt and just a drizzle of olive oil.

After spreading them out on a baking sheet that was covered in olive oil spray and baking for about 15 minutes, I flipped and smashed them with the bottom of a cup.  They baked for another 15 – 20 minutes and were done! I enjoyed them but next time I’ll be sure to have some dipping sauce to go along with the tostones.

At the same time, I sliced up some peaches, tossed them with some brown sugar, cinnamon and honey and baked them until soft. Delicious!